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Improving young people’s engagement with education

Research at UWE Bristol has helped improve young people’s
participation and achievements in education. The research
stimulated new partnerships between universities, colleges and
schools. It has also influenced wider policy debate both at the
national level and around the country.

UWE Bristol research tackles real-world issues

Back in 2005, only 10% of young people from the Bristol South
parliamentary constituency went on to higher education, compared
with 42% nationally. Why was this, and what could be done to
address it? To answer these questions, the Higher Education Funding Council for
England (HEFCE) commissioned UWE Bristol to investigate.

The research was led by Professor Lynn Raphael Reed, Head of UWE
Bristol’s Department of Education and Childhood until her
retirement in 2012, in collaboration with several UWE Bristol
colleagues, including
Dr Neil Harrison and
Mrs Kathryn Last.

The resulting report, published in 2007, proved so valuable to
HEFCE that they commissioned a second report
from UWE Bristol – the ‘Four Cities Report’ – analysing and drawing
together earlier reports by other researchers on three further
cities.

The reasons for the lack of take-up of higher education were
many and varied, and were specific to this particular locality.
Rather than passively drifting out of education as was often
assumed, the young people had made active decisions: for example,
they valued taking up work and family life early. They wanted
immediate benefits such as the ability to earn. Early employment or
even teenage parenthood gave them a sense of choice and
control.

The reports identified the need to develop respectful
relationships that could help improve schools, rather than dwelling
on shortfalls in the young people, their schools, families and
communities – which tended to limit what they felt they could
achieve.

Importantly, the reports recommended new ‘extended partnership’
models of school governance, in which representatives from the
wider local community would become involved in the governing
bodies, including businesses and other groups. Amongst these,
further and higher education institutions should have a visible
presence, offering their experience and expertise in the running of
the schools.

Improvements in local schools

UWE Bristol itself then embarked on this kind of
partnership with local schools.

Starting in the Bristol South constituency, the location of the
research itself, the first partnership was with the Bridge Learning
Campus in 2009, an innovative new school providing for pupils
across the entire age range from 4 to 19 years old. It replaced an
earlier school that had been identified as failing. The new
school’s governance system was heavily influenced by the UWE
Bristol research: it is run by a trust partnership which
includes UWE Bristol, City of Bristol College and
Bristol City Council.

The effect on the school has been profound. Those involved have
even described it as transformational. Compared with the school it
replaced it has radically improved both community expectations and
the standards actually achieved: in 2012, 45% of students achieved
five or more A*-C grades in their GCSEs compared with only 11% in 2006.

Involving higher and further education providers in the
management of the school, as recommended by the UWE
Bristol research, has helped the school to support lifelong
learning and to engage hard-to-reach and vulnerable families.

UWE Bristol went on to enter into a similar innovative
partnership outside the Bristol South area. John Cabot Academy, a successful
Bristol school, had partnered with a weaker nearby school, seeding
what was later to become the Cabot Learning
Federation. By 2013 this had grown into a federation of 11
schools with a central chief executive.

Primarily as a result of the research findings, UWE
Bristol became one of the Federation’s principal sponsors,
developing the same form of ‘extended partnership’ that proved so
successful at the Bridge Learning Campus. UWE Bristol is
represented on the governing bodies of all of the Federation’s
schools.

The clearer chains of accountability that have resulted from
these arrangements have been a key factor in raising standards for
its pupils.

This has caught the attention of
policy makers at the national level. The Federation’s success, and
UWE Bristol’s contribution to it, has twice been highlighted in
Michael Gove’s Academies Annual Reports to Parliament (2012 and
2013) as well as in other influential policy documents.

Improvements start to spread

The successful innovations at Bridge Learning Campus drew
attention to the UWE Bristol research that had inspired them.
Raphael Reed was asked to present the findings to meetings with key
national bodies, including one called by Government minister, the
Rt Hon Bill Rammell. Bristol South’s own local MP, Rt Hon Dawn
Primarolo, further raised their profile both locally and
nationally.

This led another local school, Brislington Enterprise College,
to develop new approaches to raising its students’ aspirations. As
a direct result of UWE Bristol’s research findings, it appointed
new staff with that brief, and forged strengthened links with local
businesses and providers of post-school education.

Dawn Primarolo has described the “significant change in the
delivery of education in South Bristol,” saying that the UWE
Bristol research was “influential” in bringing it about.

Influencing the wider policy debate

Raphael Reed’s ‘Four Cities Report’ has influenced policy
discussions on local education provision in various parts of the
UK. It provided a model that others have followed in undertaking
similar work in Hastings, Leeds, East London and Salford, for
example. In Nottingham, it was taken up by local MP Graham Allen,
where it stimulated city-wide discussions on how best to widen
participation in post-school education.

“Widening participation practice is certainly more subtle and
sophisticated than it was before the research was carried out,”
according to a senior national educationalist.

Dawn Primarolo has gone so far as to say that “the research was
highly valued by education ministers in the previous Labour
Government in which I served,” adding that it “informed and
influenced policy”. Its findings “continue to prove invaluable to
schools, policymakers and higher education institutions”.